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Associated Press

Vice President Joe Biden visits Atlanta for Nunn fundraiser

ATLANTA | Vice President Joe Biden's midterm election fundraising tour made a stop in Atlanta, where he attended a private fundraising event for U.S. Senate candidate Michelle Nunn on Tuesday.

Nunn, a Democrat, announced plans to run for Georgia's open U.S. Senate seat. Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss is retiring, and Democrats see Nunn as one of their best chances to pick up a GOP seat.

Biden is campaigning and raising money around the country for Democrats in the 2014 midterm elections. Many of his stops are in states such as Georgia, where President Barack Obama is unpopular among white voters. For Nunn to win, she'll have to get support from white voters who supported Mitt Romney over Obama in 2012.

Biden quipped about the chill when he departed Air Force Two late Tuesday morning. "Where's the warm air?" he said, before immediately departing in a motorcade to an East Lake YMCA, where he chatted with local children and passed out stuffed toys.

The first stop came at the invitation of former Sen. Sam Nunn, the candidate's father. Before reporters were ushered out of the room, Biden made a point to praise Sam Nunn as a conciliator and deal-maker when the two served together in the Senate.

"No one was more bipartisan than you," Biden told the elder Nunn.

Michelle Nunn doesn't necessarily invoke her father, but that theme is a central part of her effort to woo conservative and independent voters she would need to defeat a Republican in November. She often bemoans partisanship and blames both parties for Capitol Hill dysfunction.

After the YMCA stop, Biden went to the fundraiser, held at the Buckhead home of longtime Democratic donor Nancy Field.

In addition to helping Nunn, Biden campaigned for the administration's proposal to raise national minimum wage to $10.10 an hour.

Biden also briefly visited media company BG Ad Group, Inc., in Cobb County. The firm's president, Darien Southerland, earlier this year wrote to Obama expressing support for the wage hike and telling the president that he would voluntarily set a $10.10 wage floor at his business.

"Thanks for what you did," Biden told Southerland. "We're going to get this thing done," the vice president added later, expressing optimism that ignores near-uniform Republican opposition to the proposal.

Democrats want to use the minimum wage fight as a way to frame Republicans as out of touch with working class Americans. Republicans, meanwhile, want to use their opposition to the health care law to repeat their success of the 2010 midterms.

Biden then visited Midtown restaurant, Mary Mac's Tea Room, where he sat with several women who recently purchased health coverage under the federally run exchange. Georgia Republicans declined to run a state-based exchange.

Biden didn't mention the exchanges' troubled rollout, instead focusing on the law's more popular provisions, such as guaranteeing coverage for individuals with existing health issues an allowing young adults to remain on family policies until age 26.